What is a mouse model for human disease?
Humans are the multicellular eukaryotic organism belonging to the kingdom Animalia and class Mammalia. The scientific name of humans is Homo sapiens. Organisms belonging to class mammals are characterized by the presence of mammary glands which are well developed in females to feed the young ones.
Mouse or mice are rodents also belonging to the class Mammalia. They have a characteristic snout, scaly tail, rounded ears and high breeding rate. Mouse is generally used as model organism for research on mammals. Model organisms are the ones that are easy to breed and maintain in laboratory conditions. Such organisms have many experimental advantages that help in studying many traits of other non-model organisms.
Protein coding regions in a mouse are 85% identical to that of humans; some genes are 60% identical while others are 90% identical to humans. This is because; mouse and humans shared a common ancestor over approximately 80 mya (million years ago). Also, mouse has high reproduction rate which allows study of multiple generations in mouse. Therefore, mouse model is best suited for studying human disease.
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